Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: If you are open to learning from your team, you're also admitting that you don't have the answer. And that goes against so much of what we traditionally value in a leader. You know, decisive, get stuff done. You know, there's a shift in I'm a leader, but I don't have all the answers, nor should I. And I want to work with you to help figure out what is needed to kind of move us forward as a team.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Hello, everyone. I am Jess Chapman, and this is the Wired to Work podcast, all about how we work and how we make work better for everyone. For a long time, we have been talking about how to make work better, and a lot of it has been focused on the individual. We talk about training, we talk about building resilience. We've now even started talking about relaxation, meditation, and all kinds of other things to help people be better at work. But what if that's the wrong diagnosis? What if that's the wrong focus? Maybe this is not about how we help individuals to do things better, although there's nothing wrong with that. Maybe the issue is that the models that we have around the design of work are wrong. And maybe work needs to change.
Most of our workplaces are built on assumptions that go back hundreds of years. Assumptions about control, about an ideal worker who has infinite energy, stable health, no caring responsibilities, can leave their emotions at the door and can work nine to five in an office. But most of that's not true anymore. If the ideal worker even ever existed, which I'm not sure that it did. Today we're going to talk about that and the challenges of work, not from a motivational lens or necessarily a how to lens, but from an organizational design lens. How do we think about the organization as a system? How do we think about how we design for the world that we're currently in?
And so I'm thrilled to have Dr. Jules Maitland join me for the conversation. Jules is the founder of All In Agency. She is a designer, researcher, and systems thinker, and her PhD focused on behavioral change technologies. How do we redesign systems that actually help people to thrive? And wouldn't it be great if we could design workplaces so that everybody could thrive as a result of work? So today, Giuls and I are going to explore what it means to redesign work, not just tweak it. How do we put people at the heart of design? And how do we make and think about the systems in the way that we design things? And we'll talk about what we can all do today to make work more helpful, more Effective and more sustainable for everyone. So let's start that conversation for the sake of everyone viewing. Tell us a bit about you. I'd love to hear a little bit about what you do and why. And specifically we could talk a little bit about your PhD research because I think that's really interesting.
[00:02:42] Speaker A: Thank you.
So I started off life as a frontline service provider. I was a nurse originally in the NHS in the uk.
And because that work didn't work for me, I ended up leaving and transitioned into software engineering, which is not an obvious pivot. And so when I started my PhD, it was around the time the smartphones were coming out. This is where I age myself.
And health tracking apps were already being developed with a goal of promoting healthy behaviors. And so while they were technically really impressive, there were some kind of red flags for me from a, you know, from a kind of provider, healthcare provider and patient perspective. Put crudely, the assumptions seem to be in these technologies that just by tracking data, and I think there are parallels between this and work, and that's why I'm kind of going down a little bit of a rabbit hole there.
There are assumptions that tracking data and increasing motivation of individuals, that change would magically follow. And it completely disregarded in this instance the social determinants of health, which have a much bigger impact on what's possible or even realistic to expect of individuals. So fast forward, kind of 10 years later, I was introduced to kind of the field of systems thinking. And that really gave me the language to articulate what I'd observed in frameworks to understand how, how systems actually change.
You know, things like policies, practices, resource flows, relationships, power, mental, you know, all that fun stuff. And so I kind of put the two approaches, the kind of user, user at the time, user centered design of technologies, I transferred that into kind of human centered design of public services and policies with the systems thinking. And six years ago we kind of established all in.
[00:04:40] Speaker B: And that's how we met.
[00:04:41] Speaker A: And that's how we met.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: And that's how we met. Yeah. So how do you see like the world of systems thinking? I'm assuming, like I'm not an expert in either of those things, but we're talking about the world of work, so there must be connections between systems thinking and humans to design. My assumption is we should be designing work around people. I don't know that that's exactly what we're doing. But can you talk a little bit about how those things might play out in the work world?
[00:05:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I think you can practice human Centered design without being familiar with systems thinking.
And it depends on where your kind of focus is. The kind of tension that I nudged into with my PhD work, because when I was looking at it from just a purely human centered design without the systems lens, I was like, well, I can understand the motivations or the barriers of an individual, but if I don't understand the broader system, then my understanding of the problem is constrained. And the opportunity, more, more, more importantly, the opportunities for interventions that impact, you know, system change is severely limited.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: So the, the whole princess, the whole principle, I think, for me of the systems thinking stuff is really interesting because when I look back at what we've been doing with organizational design over the last, I'd even say 100 years, so you look at, like Taylorism, all that stuff, which was the 1920s. Let's go and look at people in factories and see how what makes them happy has been really, for me, layering or tinkering. Right? So what we did, I think we've done a fantastic job, generally speaking, of raising the world's awareness of the notion of engagement. I think of all of the things I've seen out there. Don, We've put some science and data to how do we look at how productive people are in a way that also supports wellbeing?
But what we've still done with that is layer that on top of the existing system, right? So we said, yeah, we want people to be more productive. We also want them to be. Well, they're not mutually exclusive, actually. If people feel well and they're happy, guess what? They produce more for you. Oh, shocker. But apparently it was quite surprising for people. And then what we did. Okay, leaders, so now you need to learn how to do all this additional stuff to compensate for a system that doesn't naturally do those things for people. So rather than addressing how work works, how roles are designed, how workflows happen, how the parts of the organization talk to each, where we've gone, okay, leaders, not only do you need to be good at leading today, but you need to be good at managing change and building teams and handling accommodations and dealing with mental health and handling stress like that. I don't even think that's sustainable. And now we've got issues with leaders going past. I'm a oosh. I don't want to lead anymore. So how do we, like, how do we get people to think about work as a system? Like, where does systems thinking fit into that?
[00:07:27] Speaker A: I think part of kind of our strategy in the work we do is making the System visible.
So when I talk about the systems, we're talking about policies that are partially visible but sometimes invisible when you kind of, you know, also include kind of like, you know, unofficial norms.
There are practices, the behaviors that we see. There's how resources are assigned, you know, like money, time, social capital, the relationships and connections between people that are often completely ignored in an org chart.
You know, there's memes all over the place of, like, what the org chart shows and like, how the teams actually work is completely different. And then obviously, like power dynamics and mental models. So some of the work that we do is when we go into, you know, whether it's workplace or not, it's actually just starting to make those things visible.
And so that can be a visual map. As you know, we've got maps apart on the wal.
It might just be a document. You know, it doesn't have to be fancy. But that's what I mean is just, well, you know, we will get kind of say, well, that's just the way it's been done. Well, why?
Oh, well, it's, you know, we've had kind of people kind of refer to policies that don't exist.
You know, so that's what I mean with like, step one is kind of just making the system visible and what helps or hinders people to get their work done and helps or hinders them to feel well in the workplace. And so that's step one.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: But I mean, I think that's actually really important because the number of times that we will do work with an organization where leaders are attempting to manipulate the tangible pieces in order to affect change. But it's not those pieces that are causing the hiccups. It's the stuff that sits below the surface. We had an integration of two organizations with radically different cultures. And what the organization did was keep restructuring roles. So because they couldn't get alignment on things, what they would do is just change over, like, change the hierarchy, change the positions, move people around, move people. The underlying issue was not the roles and the positions. It was fundamental values and principles that were different in the way those two organizations saw the world. No one was surfacing any of that. So we kept dealing with the. The tangible pieces of the system that were on paper and could be seen. And so that's a. We, like, how do, you know, helping organizations think about actually, what is it that you're pulling the lever on? Is it actually part of the system that you don't naturally see or do something with rewriting policies? I'm saying this all the time. You can have a policy that doesn't change behavior. Like, you can write all the parts and you're like, that's not going to change behavior. And the human centered piece, I think is interesting because I think there's a lot of people out there who would say, like business owners and senior leaders who would say, yes, I absolutely do care about people, but I'm not sure that we are designing work from a human centered perspective. So how, like, what's, what's the distinction there? Can we help people? And someone's going to sit there going, but I care about people, Jules. Like I care about people. But that doesn't mean that you have an organization designed around people.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: You can't have a business without the team, just like you can't have a business without the clients.
And so when I talk about kind of human centricity when it comes to teams, it's about understanding your team's challenges from the perspectives of their experience and working with them to identify opportunities for improvement.
It doesn't mean, and I think what sometimes puts people off, it doesn't mean that if you engage with your teams to find out what they want and need. It doesn't mean that you can do everything that people ask for, but you bring that understanding and the relationship you're building by doing that. And then you also kind of marry that with the needs and wants of the clients, with the needs and wants of the business.
It's by doing that, it's not necessarily prioritizing one over the other. It's just centering those most impacted and that includes your team in the design of the things that impact them.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Well, I think, I think so. That makes a whole lot of sense to me conceptually. But I think you said something that's really important there, which is, I'm just going to hear that they need more time or they need more resources, both of which come back to constraints in the organization in terms of money. Right. And most senior leaders, I am one. I would be in the same camp, which is I can't afford to do everything that everybody asks for all the time. Can't afford to go to a three day work week. I personally would love to have a three day work week. That would be genius. If I had a three day work week though, I wouldn't have an organization anymore. So, like, I think people often wind forward to a solution that is just give us more staff or like we need more time off or. Because that's an easy way of trying to solve a problem that feels Like a really friendly problem. So how do you, like, do you have any thoughts on how you help an organization that really wants to put people at the heart of it, but is honestly think they're going. But what I'm going to hear is a bunch of stuff I'm not going to be able to afford to do. Like, how do we find that balance for people? Because it is like there aren't necessarily simple solutions to these things or we'd have done them. Yeah, right.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
And so I think about 5 thoughts fired in my brain there at the same time.
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:04] Speaker A: But now they're all canceling each other out.
I think not having the conversation doesn't make the issue go away.
[00:13:14] Speaker B: Brilliant.
[00:13:15] Speaker A: And so I think fundamentally, I think it's, this is about relationships. And when I think about what's been, what is undervalued, what's been missed in the current, what's been stripped away in all honesty is the role of relationships in teams and how business works.
And so I think this is a relationship building exercise. It's building trust and it's building shared understanding. So it's not just going in and saying, give me your laundry list of requirements. And it's not asking them to figure.
[00:13:59] Speaker B: Out.
[00:14:02] Speaker A: What should be done to fix it. It's like, let me understand what's going on for you, let me understand your pain points.
And then just like, we don't want the band aids here as well, which is, you know, the more money, the mud. So it's, then it goes into more of a deeper kind of reflection and some creative thinking. And this is why designers are really helpful to kind of dig into. Like, okay, well, what, what are the underlying issues that are causing this? And then are there any kind of levers that we can kind of tweak? And that kind of goes back to Donella Meadows model, the levers of system changes is it might just be redirecting existing resources. It might just be enabling clearer communication between two teams that don't normally, you know, it might be simplifying. You know, I come from a user experience design background. It might be simplifying application forms so there's less client complaints, you know, so there's lots of way. But that's where you can not only get there, but you're more likely to get there if you have a deep understanding of what's actually going on on the ground. And then you can marry it with the business realities and constraints.
[00:15:19] Speaker B: Yeah, so you're not saying, yeah, that's perfect. You're not saying, hey, Team, come and give me your wish lists. Right. That's not the point.
It made me think about what in the UK was called back to the floor. And I think it's called Undercover Boss here. You know, when you get the senior leader actually goes and has to do the doing and then they suddenly are like, why are we doing this? I didn't think this is what we were doing. Because on paper, the system that you're describing that is described on paper is not actually the real system that everybody's working in. And when someone actually goes and does that, they realize. Yeah. Now this makes no sense and can then more easily see how they might adjust the process and the system without having to cost, you know, a fortune. But we don't always necessarily take the time to go and do the doing for a while and feel the pain.
[00:16:00] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:16:00] Speaker B: And I think you're bang on the money. I mean, we would talk about it too, from a employee relations perspective.
Pretending the issue wasn't there doesn't make the issue go away. So you might as well put the conversation on the table and talk about it with people and say, we're trying to figure out how to fix it, then pretending there's nothing wrong.
[00:16:17] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, I think without that kind of critical lens and without that kind of revisiting of, like, what's going on and why are we doing this?
Because sometimes they're approach, you know, just to speak to, you know, the CEO on the floor like that. I didn't even know we did, like, why are we doing this? Like, I, you know, or there are teams that create reports that never get read, you know, so there's the opportunity. Nobody, nobody's sitting around on their hands doing nothing. Everybody's busy. But we may not be revisiting what people are doing in, you know, to, to see is there still value just because we did, does that mean we still have to. And that can create space as well.
[00:16:56] Speaker B: Yeah. And that I think that's interesting too, when you. Because there are at least three clients I'm currently thinking of who are in what I would say need to evolve their practices. And it's not necessarily thinking about your description about systems. It's not necessarily the traditional work system in terms of the hierarchy of the people. It is the culture, the mindset, and the values for the type of work they need to address in the way the world is today.
And they're trying to orientate everybody behind a new direction and kind of shift the whole system, which is, you know, if you don't Put people at the heart of that. It's not going to work. Right. Like you're going to say, all right, everybody, we're not going left. And everyone's like, well, we've been going right for the last 20 years, so why would I go left now? Like, that doesn't make any sense to me. Right.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And. And there's other. And kind of without knowing the specifics, I think there's another.
[00:17:51] Speaker B: But.
[00:17:52] Speaker A: And maybe this is for a different conversation. I don't think necessarily, like the big, like, system change doesn't necessarily, doesn't happen in a big bank. It's not like old system, new system, you know, And I think when you are trying to get people behind a vision for a new way of working, there's. It's very, it's very hard to.
If you can't imagine it or you can't, you haven't experienced it. It's very hard to get behind something that's unkn.
And so there's other kind of methods from design in kind of prototyping, kind of new ways of working, small experiments, small demonstrators. It's back to that kind of the show don't tell.
If we can make the intent real for people, if we can get it out of someone's head, especially a leader's head, and then people can experience, they can experience it and not necessarily get on board. They can experience it and, you know, and change it, adapt it. Because I think we see it in a lot of disciplines, the kind of theory, practice gap of, you know, what's, you know. And I, you know, I was in academia, you know, like what, what happens in, in the textbooks very rarely happens in the real world. And so it's, it's people on the ground, it's your team who are, who are doing the work. It's the people who are experiencing the challenge that can help you translate what feels like a good idea into kind of into action and what will actually work in the field.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: Yeah, there's a couple of reasons too, I think, from a people and brain perspective, why that bit so important. So the, this idea of, I've told you, I've told you things need to change and therefore you're going to change along with them. I have never, ever seen work, like, never.
But we don't often talk about the, the value of seeing things in practice. And it's the same principle when you talk about things like visualization, right. Like you're actually helping the brain do it so we can see something as soon as we See it, we start to create the wiring around what that behavior and that action looks like. So even if I can watch you doing it, watch it in action, there is a much better chance that my brain will go, oh, I can do that. And I can, I can see myself doing it. Picture myself in that new world, picture myself in that new state. And then you're actually training your brain to move there. If we just say, this is nice, we need to go over there, that doesn't work for people. And habit is louder. Right? All the time. Our brains are wired to do what's simple and easy. So if I, for the last 20 years, you've told me going right was fine, and now you just tell me going left is good and I don't understand going left. Visualize going left. See you going left, then there's no chance that my brain will prioritize doing any of those things. So that's, that's kind of, that's kind of an neat piece of thinking. So if we were going to then put human centered design and systems thinking at the heart of designing work today, what would, like, what did your head say that would mean? What sorts of things would you say? Well, we should be doing this, listening to you. Thus far, I've heard one, we aren't putting the people at the coal face doing the work at the heart of solving the problem.
[00:21:00] Speaker A: Leaders sometimes get a bad rap in, in these conversations, you know, and, but I don't think that's, it's always kind of warranted. I think there are very real reasons why, you know, the leaders themselves are all also working in this system that we are suggesting needs to change, you know, and so what I've observed as well, so, yeah, I think folks, folks with the power aren't necessarily these, you know, malevolent kind of power hoarders.
They typically care very much about their teams and like you said, they don't want to put an additional burden on the teams and so feel that they should have it all figured out as well. So on top of that, I don't want to ask the team to do this without just checking in and seeing if they do. And my experience is if you were trying to help improve someone's conditions, doesn't matter how busy they're, it doesn't matter like what conditions folks are living in. They're like, yeah, you've asked me. Yeah, like, like I have, you know, I have time for, I have suggestions. I am, I'm on board.
So there's, there's that piece. But then there's also the, I think where that stops though is when there's a history of engagement fatigue.
So when there's a history of leadership coming in and kind of, you know, oh, tell us how to make things better and then radio silence, there's no feedback on what was heard, there's no justification on what was moved forward or left behind. So the caveat there is if there is engagement fatigue or change fatigue, trust has to be built.
The other.
Yeah, so the other barrier, other than kind of not wanting to be a burden on their team, is if you are open to learning from your team, you're also admitting that you don't have the answer.
And that goes against so much of what we traditionally value in a leader. You know, decisive, get stuff done, you know, and so I think there needs to be a shift and that also sometimes you do need to bring the team along with that. There's a shift in I'm a leader, but I don't have all the answers, nor should I. And I want to work with you to help figure out what is needed to move us forward as a team.
And that takes a shift as well. So I think they're very real concerns.
[00:23:42] Speaker B: But I think that's interest. That's an interesting second part to this. Right. So we're kind of been talking about does the system of work not work today? And when you look at like burnout and stress the fact we still don't have equality after however many years and there's still marginalized populations that don't know equal representation to work, there's a lot of things to say the system doesn't work. But that's an interesting lens on maybe leadership is still not moving. So we are starting to talk more from my perspective, about the distinction between directive and non directive leadership. And there is an increasing recognition that traditional ideas of leadership, as in top down, more command and control are not the way the world is moving or what the world needs. But this idea of a consultative leader who is able to deliver results not because of their technical expertise or their knowledge base, but because they are a integrator who has the connections, who brings the players together, who can facilitate, bring the knowledge out of other people like that, I think that's largely an under recognized and under supported skill. Most leadership transitions are still very much, you were technically good at the job, so now we're going to promote you to being leader, which by the way bears absolutely no resemblance to the job you were doing before. And so we're going to continue to clap and Cheer when you technically deliver results personally or through your team.
Not if you display skills of coaching facilitation like skills development, collaboration. If you drive innovation through collective, collective means or processing. And so maybe some of those processes we have around leadership identification and reward needs to change in order to get that headspace to exist.
[00:25:26] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. Because I mean I've seen and worked with some teams that are. And it's interesting that distinction between leadership and the system. Like we, and often we do fall into the kind of trap of talking about the system as if it's somewhere out there outside of us. Like we are all the system we are part of. You know, and I've seen and worked with some like highly like creative teams who, and a lot of the teams can tell you exactly what needs to change.
But if it's not on the executive roadmap, there's, there's a need now to be able to adapt like adaptive leadership. I think like the world is, you know, like changing so fast. There's so many things going on and we, we aren't in the old industrial area of command and control.
We're, you know, some organizations are, are still trying to operate in, in that manner, but the world has moved on and, and we all have to move on with it. And I, I think that ability to adapt, adapt and pivot is going to be essential moving forward.
[00:26:35] Speaker B: There's like three different places I want to go right now, so I'm going to try and remember to go to all three of them in some fake form. I'm going to come back to Commander control versus other models because that also triggered me something to talk to you about Teal and OCTOPUS organizations and learning organizations and all those other things.
But you said something earlier that I think is really important to just take a moment on, around the response to feedback because I do think organizations have mechanisms in most cases to hear from the people on the cold face doing the work. When we've been promoting now for 20, 30 years, engagement surveys, like focus groups, like if you think about lean processes, they're all about getting people to provide input.
And we would say something similar around. If you don't close the loop back afterwards, then actually people's engagement level drops.
So what have you seen that is the reason that people don't action the feedback like they can. Somebody's getting the data and they're saying and pass or don't close the loop. And what could we do about it?
[00:27:40] Speaker A: I think there, I mean there's a bit, there's no, there's no one answer to that question. I think some reasons that I have seen is I'll start starting with the most skeptical.
Get that one out of the way is a checkbox exercise and they're just told to do it and then they don't have any intent to act on it.
And that would be one of those things, like, if you're not going to act on it, don't ask. And that'll save everyone time.
[00:28:08] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:28:11] Speaker A: I think what I think sometimes what people hear isn't a big enough problem for the execs. And so it's dismissed at least.
[00:28:29] Speaker B: Right. Like, or perhaps just deprioritize. Like now I can't run. I can't figure out how we're going to get this client to continue their contract. I've got to focus over here. We don't have enough room to focus over those things.
[00:28:42] Speaker A: Yeah, maybe. Yeah. And, yeah. And that competing priority as well. And depending on what level we're talking, it's not that, you know, there's necessarily a leadership team that are completely autonomous. And so there's other instances where they'll hear things but they are told absolutely not. And then they cannot or won't share that, you know, with the team. So. And a similar thing with the competing priorities, there's just, I think, just not a culture of sharing the reality of the, like, constraints. And so rather than say no and why not, we just don't say anything. Yeah, yeah.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Or opposite. I've seen sometimes, culturally, that there isn't a willingness to put the elephant on the table and say things aren't working. And so sometimes there's a hiding culture. But also, I think sometimes there's a. We have to actually make the pig's ear look like a silk press culture going on. Like, we've got to spend a lot of time making it sound not as bad because we'd best not say it's bad because then we might not have a job at the end of the day.
And I do spend a lot of time. I was in a conversation with the CEO last week and I was like, you need to remember that people don't tell you the truth. Right. Like, you are the top of the tree. You wield an awesome amount of power. It is very difficult for someone to say to you the thing you have built is broken in a meaningful way because they don't know what you're going to do with that information and what power you wield over them. And so making sure those channels actually work and there's some flows back of the loop and I think can be also important.
[00:30:15] Speaker A: Yeah. And just one more thing that may or may not be relevant but there's a linking it back to the systems thinking so that, you know, like leadership might hear something and they, you know, it gets dismissed because it, you know, speaking to that, staying with the rigid, this was the direction we're going in that would take us off. So we're not going to do that because we're sticking to this.
But then there's also, particularly when we're talking about kind of work workforce well being. Well, that's not our job or that's just not something we can deal with. So I think about like, like living wages don't like, you know, so you know, if folks, if folks aren't earning a living wage and so they're working under the, under the poverty line and like, of course people can't be hugely productive in that environment when they're thinking about how to pay the bills.
And I fully understand for some small businesses that's not something they can afford.
That's a bigger issue. This is a systems issue because it's. Now we're looking at like the economic system. Yeah.
But instead of, I think one way that we can start to nudge or is not just say, well that's not our job. We won't do anything but at least advocate for, at least pass that on to someone who can. Don't let that insight drop. You know, whether that's your chamber of Commerce, whether that's an advocacy group, we see it all the time where in client experience where they go to one place and think about finding customer services and then you get bounced and bounced and bounced around and then you get dropped. Same thing for your team. So I think just being aware of the systems doesn't mean you can change all of the things, but you can at least act with the knowledge of where that lies. So I think there's something else there about acting on what you hear, even if it's not something that you personally are in control of. Yeah.
[00:32:22] Speaker B: And, and back to your earlier point, I think just acknowledging the reality of it and explaining why that's not something that you can currently do anything about. But that doesn't mean you don't care and it's not important and you're not interested in it. But I don't have a solution for that right now in the context of it. But please keep talking to me and I'll see what I can do as we kind of go Along. I think it's really important you, as I said, where do I go now? Do I grow styles? Do I go leader?
You also talked about that leadership piece and the fact that, which I was a helpful reframe for me because I think I do all the time. That we are the system. I think that's really a really good reminder. So any advice for that mid level leader who's sitting in it and thinking, yeah, sure, Jules and Jess, I am the system, but I don't feel like I've got any power right now. I know my team's not happy.
Like, but my boss has said that's not, that's not a hill for us to die on. We're not focusing on that right now. Like, what do you do if you're part of the system but you don't feel like you have the agency to change the system?
What's your take on that? Right.
[00:33:26] Speaker A: We tend to think if we can't solve the thing, we can't do anything.
And so there's, you know, one of the back to the kind of how systems actually change. It's not necessarily big bang. So that I would kind of encourage folks to reflect on. Like, is there a little thing I can do?
Even if it's responding and acknowledging, even if it's looking for ways to find other people in your peer group who are experiencing the same thing. You know, there's, there's strength in numbers to maybe kind of like advocate for change up the pipeline.
Yeah. I mean it's not down to any one individual to completely transform an organization. And so I do think, you know, so I don't like jumping on the pedestal because it's that, that then becomes a completely unhealthy environment.
[00:34:25] Speaker B: Yeah. I had a conversation with somebody yesterday who was like, I don't have the capacity to be the person.
She said, there's a change that needs to happen, but I need other people to give me energy to make this change happen. She said, otherwise, I just feel like I'm fighting the tide all the time. And then that's actually affecting my mental well being. And she said now somebody else has joined her in the organization who's also kind of going, wait, what? She said now she feels a bit more galvanized against do something about it. And I, I. You said power in numbers. I always had power and coalition. Right. When you think about change management practices that we would think about from a people perspective, who is your coalition to move the dial on things? So now if we're thinking about making work Better. We're saying if you're at the top, don't, don't ignore and don't assume people are telling you what you need to know, because they're probably not. And now you're so separated from the actual work, you may not know the pain that your people are feeling. How are you going to go in and actually feel what it likes, what it's like, what the reality is of working there? If you're in the middle and you're not the decision maker and the budget controls aren't yours, don't. Again, doesn't mean you need to. Just because you can't change the whole system doesn't mean you stop. Who else is seeing the same thing? Maybe there's more people at your level who teams experiencing the same problem and you can group together and then you can put some recommendations together. We're not powerless just because we don't sit at the top of the tree.
[00:35:50] Speaker A: Yeah, we all have some degree of power.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: There is a concept around locus of control to the extent to which people feel like they're powerful or powerless in a given context. And I think it's very easy back to thinking about the reality of a structure.
We get caught up to your point. I'm making a parallel in my head now around visible structure. So people will say, but I don't have the role, or I don't have the budget, or I don't have the job description, or I don't have the resources, which is the physical, tangible, visible structure. But that doesn't mean you don't have influence. It doesn't mean you can't have conversations. It doesn't mean you can't drive coalitions or create change with the organization. Those are the less visible parts of the system you're working in. But perhaps if they're less visible, they're less fixed and therefore you could do more things with them.
You made a reference earlier to the. The potential for changing our overall work structure. So you were talking about like historically we've been commander control, and there's kind of a need to move that. And that, that's certainly my experience looking at organizational design theory. When we look at like the 1900s and it was people are units of economic delivery to be optimized, not so much where the worker or the employee is today. But I'm not sure that we've actually moved super far in how we think about workplaces and workplace design now. There's a few things out there that, you know, if you go looking for other pieces in that space we have the concept of octopus organizations that's about how do we create more agile organizations that aren't rigid in their hierarchy. We've got the concept of learning organizations that's been around for a while and how do you create people that are thinking about knowledge development, knowledge transfer, knowledge growth? We've got teal organizations now. You can tell me if you want me to take this out of the podcast later. So Ros, we might need to take this out of the podcast later but I know you've been playing with, experimenting with talking about the notion of teal organizations for you and for all in. So can you talk a little bit about what a teal organization is for folks and then why you've been interested in this for your organization?
[00:37:58] Speaker A: Yeah, we've got another hour for this.
Yeah, absolutely. So.
And I don't have my book with me, so I'm going to misrepresent slightly but basically I learned about teal organizations through a book by Frederic Le Louve called Reinventing Organizations.
And in that book he documents the different styles of companies kind of historically from yeah, back to the industrial revolution. I think teal organizations are what he says is the next evolution in this kind of revision or evolution of company structures, which is more.
There are three, there's basically kind of three pillars of a teal organization.
One which is the one that kind of got my attention most closely was self managing teams.
The other is bringing the wholeness as in recognizing that we are human beings coming into work and we aren't just kind of units of production. And then the third is around evolutionary purpose which sounds a little bit like the learning organization that you mentioned. Basically what attracted it to me is it just feels like a more, more democratic agile structure.
And the reason, and what like the argument I think to be made for that is the old models aren't working anymore and you know, we've got the workforce engagement piece.
I think another kind of argument for it is the kind of, you know, disparity, the huge disparities in wealth that are going on now under kind of more extractive capitalism. This, these kind of models tend to kind of share, distribute the decision making, distribute responsibility and you know, my intent is to distribute the wealth as well. So it's not, it's not top down in any of those things.
The reason I have kind of like been drawn to it and we've discussed the team and we have committed to start doing some experiments to see what that might look like for us. But we're very early days Like a month into the, the, the decision.
The reason that I was drawn to it is that I would. From the get go, I, I talked, I talk about myself being an accidental entrepreneur. I didn't set out to create a business, probably had no business creating a business.
And I found myself bumping and, and tried from the get go to have a, a very kind of collaborative, non hierarchical structure. We're a small organization. We're, we're fairly flat as a, as an organization as well. But I couldn't, no matter how collaborative I tried to be, I couldn't get away from either the expectation or the responsibility of me.
I'm the founder, I'm the managing director, and therefore I should set the expectations on how the various bits of the business work because that's my responsibility and that's.
And I ultimately have the hiring and firing decision. There's a lot of power. And no matter how collaborative I want to be, if I'm the only person in the room that can hire and fire people, how, how authentically can people contribute if they think what I'm suggesting is a terrible idea or we're doing a terrible job? Back to that.
And so yeah, I, I find Teal that the, the structures that they provide, they provide an alternative to that. And so there's some case studies where this might be going down a bit of a rabbit hole that'll get. I did start, but you know, some of the case studies in his book that they actually have a caveat that the team can actually vote to replace the CEO.
So really the power is kind of shared across the organization and that's really what I want. The reason that I created all in and didn't go as a solo contractor was because I knew I couldn't do it on my own. So if I can't do it on my own, I don't want to hold it on my own. And so for me, that Teal maybe gives us a structure that would be more aligned with just how, how I, how I feel comfortable. And we'll see. We'll see if it works. I think it's pretty.
I've had discussions with many people and it's not an easy thing to transition to, but we're gonna, we're gonna give it a try and see how it goes.
[00:42:54] Speaker B: I am super excited to see how the journey goes and to hear about your pilots as they go along.
And I think there's, there's a couple of nuggets in there that I think are relevant. Even if you perhaps don't want to go as far as a fully distributed team who can decide to replace a CEO, because I think there's a few people who have a slight moment when they hear that kind of principle. But, but the two things around, you know, you can do it alone. We see that everywhere right now, right? Like there's lots of people who are even in small businesses, but certainly in individual contributor contractor type roles where it's in the collaboration that we can add the most value. It is in the creation of an entity. And that doesn't need to be a formalized, structured entity, but by having a group of us together, we can compete in a way that we never competed before.
And that, that looks different. That looks different to a structure where the boss is in charge and makes the decision on hiring and firing. And kind of the coalition idea of work, I think is one that's going to perhaps get more traction in the next little while as more people choose independence to have the flexibility they're looking for. I suspect we might get more and more people who create coalitions of contractors as opposed to having a formal organizational structure. And then you said something else that I think you said. I don't want to do it alone and I don't want to hold it alone. And I think that that's also really interesting frame to think about in terms of the leadership shift that we need to make. Like we are asking leaders right now to be able to do a vast number of things that historically they didn't have to do. When you became a leader, historically you needed to be pretty good at the job so that you could teach other people to be able to good at the job. Now we're asking people's social ability in a leadership role to be extremely high and for people to make decisions in a world that is far more complex and ambiguous, unambiguous than it's ever been.
And I think a lot more people are going to self select out and say, I don't want that responsibility or the paycheck you're telling me I'm going to get for the level of responsibility you're asking me to hold isn't going to be there. And so we're going to need to find models that are more distributive in terms of how do we problem solve, how do we deal with things, how do we set policies, how do we set norms? Because there are going to be people who say no, I don't want to do that, or we're going to have to accept that the few that say yes are willing to do that, you're going to have to live under what it is they decide is right for an organization.
But I don't, I mean, I don't know anybody that I've talked to about the whole notion of work right now who would say they think work is working.
Well, thank you very much for taking your time to come and talk to me today. As always, I always enjoy our conversations.
I'm hoping that you will agree to come back and be part of our panels as we go throughout the year. And as we have guests on, you can pepper them with questions the same way I do and get their thoughts on this topic.
And I'd love to hear more about how your teal journey continues and how those things shape up for you as we go along, because you're a real life example of how work is shifting and how we might do things differently.
[00:45:56] Speaker A: We'll see. Watch his face.
Thank you for having me, Jess.
[00:46:01] Speaker B: So that's a wrap for today. Thank you very much for joining in. And if you liked our conversation today, please do like and subscribe. You can find all of our episodes of the podcast Wired for Work and our previous incarnation, Unlocking your People, on Apple, Spotify, and YouTube. You can also check out our websites E3CA and Neuroworks CA for more information about what we do in the wonderful world of work. So thanks again for joining in and I look forward to seeing you on another episode.
